


Adventuring

by Living_Underground



Series: After Eleven [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, I am truly terrible at writing tags, I've typed the tags out already but my laptop crashed, Kind of all over the place, Kind of fluffy, The Unremarkable House (X-Files), adapting to family life, is Jackson an adult?, so here we go again, three emotionally unavailable adults and a baby, what even classes as an adult?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:01:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23844895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Living_Underground/pseuds/Living_Underground
Summary: William/Jackson comes home. Adapts to family life. Goes for walks. Basically.
Relationships: Dana Scully & William | Jackson Van De Kamp, Fox Mulder & William | Jackson Van De Kamp, Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: After Eleven [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1704715
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	Adventuring

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I still feel weird calling William Jackson. I dunno why. Just do. I think it's because he was William for so long. Anyway, that's what prompted this, kind of.
> 
> It's all over the place. Sorry.
> 
> Hey, go read part one of my 'what happens after season eleven finishes and Chris Carter stopped royally f***ing with their life' series. I mean, you don't have to, it probably isn't 100% necessary. But it would be nice? This will still be here when you get back.

He’d come back on Christmas Eve when Melissa was three months old, the lights wrapped around the porch glowing on his face, his real face. Just a canvas backpack slung over his shoulder. He’d asked, when Scully opened the door, baby in one hand and gun in the other, if there was any room at the inn.

She’d asked if it was him, if it was _really_ him, and in response, he’d shown her vague, hazy vignettes of him as a toddler, of her singing badly to him.

She’d cried, and Mulder had rushed up behind her, catching the baby just as she let her slip from her arms.

_Hey Kid_ , he’d said with a nod, not expecting the response of _hey Dad_ he got in return. He was offered the couch for the night next few nights and promised a trip to Ikea as soon as it was open so that they could turn Mulder’s office into his bedroom. 

He’d started wandering after a week of being there. After spending so long moving about, hitchhiking from place to place, the sudden stop left him restless. So he walked. At first, it was on his own, taking an hour or two away from the family that was around him all the time, exploring the land that surrounded the property and the remarkable-unremarkable home he had found himself. He walked through the meadows and amongst the trees, discovering an icy stream and a tumbledown, ivy-covered, brick outbuilding. Occasionally he’d grab some paper before he left, or he’d find a warped panel of wood, once a particularly smooth, flat rock, and he’d draw and paint the world around him, and the world in his head. Sometimes they overlapped; his two worlds.

The first time he had company was about a month into his time with them. He and Mulder had spent most of the day painting the walls of his new bedroom whilst Scully sat at what was now the family desk in the main living area, reading through a case study that she’d been sent to consult on for the hospital. He’d watched as she rubbed her eyes behind her reading glasses and took a deep breath before diving back into the paperwork in front of her. ‘I was going to go do some painting, use some of the leftover paint up, and I need someone to help me carry it.’

She looked up at him briefly before making a note in the margin of one of the papers. ‘I’m sure Mulder can help.’

‘Well, he’s been doing a lot of painting and I think he pulled his arm, he probably needs to rest it. It won’t take long.’ She looked like she was about to protest when he walked over to her and looked at what she was working on. ‘Paint tins can’t be heavier than this. Take a break – stretch. You shouldn’t stay sat all day.’

‘I haven’t been sat all day, I’ve been looking after Melissa, too,’ he had already taken her arm and was guiding her up, carefully removing her glasses with his other hand.

‘Come on. You’ll need a coat, it’s cold outside.’

‘I’m supposed to be the one saying that to you,’ she murmured, shrugging her coat on anyway and winding a scarf around her neck. He went ahead to organise the paint tins on the porch whilst she stuffed her feet into her boots, and when she joined him outside, shutting the door behind her, he was already holding the four tins. ‘I thought you said you needed help carrying?’

‘Oh, uh, yeah.’ He put two of the cans down and pulled three paintbrushes from his pocket. ‘They might fall out otherwise, and I don’t want to lose them.’

An iconic raised eyebrow. ‘Somehow I don’t quite believe you.’

He shrugged. ‘You looked like you could do with a break. Come on, I want to get some of this done before it gets dark.’

They walked in silence, him leading, as they made their way towards the tree-line. Steely clouds hung low over them, and a tang in the air suggested snow would be coming later in the evening. He guided her over fallen branches and mossy outcrops of rock to the outhouse.

‘I don’t think I knew this was here.’

‘No? How long have you lived here?’

‘Well…on and off for the past…I don’t even know, it must be over fifteen years now.’

‘On and off?’

‘Mulder and I have had our problems. The occasional breakup. I was always the one to leave…’ She frowned as her voice trailed off, worrying her lower lip and keeping her gaze firmly on the leaf-strewn floor.

‘Well, you always seem to end back together again. I guess that’s a good thing.’

‘We gravitate towards one another like asteroids on a collision course,’ she shrugged, ‘but I wouldn’t have it any other way.’ He smiled and nodded before walking around to the back wall of the ruined building. ‘Oh, William…’ she breathed, her eyes scanning across the mural, ‘you painted this?’

‘Uh-huh. I’ve just been using bits of paint leftover from the bedroom, and I found a couple of other tins in a cupboard that Mulder said I could use.’ He set down the tins next to a pile of tins that already adorned the floor, and started prying the lids off. Scully started looking closer at the little details. She recognised bits of the mural, flashes from visions. A curl of smoke. Anonymous crowds. A flash of red hair and pale skin.

He had just finished stirring an ice blue when she spoke again. ‘Do you mind us calling you William, or would you prefer Jackson?’ When he had arrived, there had been so many other questions, making sure he was okay, out of trouble, healthy, and so much relief, that they hadn’t really discussed names. They’d called him William because that was what they knew him as. He would flit between Mom and Dad and Scully and Mulder, tending to stick more to their surnames, though they really didn’t mind – they had him back, they would do anything to keep him. And then as time wore on, it just became more difficult to ask. They had spoken about so many things, skirting the important ones – maybe dancing around questions was a family trait. It had been discussed at length between her and Mulder in the dead of night, silently murmured questions of how to ask, when to ask, whether, because he hadn’t corrected them already, that meant he was fine with William? But there was something about seeing the paintings, wreathed in tangled of ivy and moss, that was so raw that it took her back to those days of seeing the visions first hand. The days when the world knew him as a different person.

Paintbrush to wall, a silence filled with the image of an eye and deep thinking. ‘I think, given that I am living under your roof, it is up to you.’

‘No. It’s up to you. You could even choose a whole new name if you wanted. It’s up to you. But we want you to feel comfortable. And we want you to know that you are loved no matter what your name is. You’re still our son.’

He nodded slowly, carefully and precisely placing the paintbrush down on the lid of the paint tin before standing up and engulfing her in a bear hug that reminded her of the hugs Mulder gave. She buried her face in his chest as he squeezed her. She kept forgetting how tall he was. ‘Thank you.’

* * *

‘She didn’t? _Really?!_ ’ A snort of laughter followed them in through the door.

‘She did. The whole class was screaming, and standing on chairs, and chasing these mice around the classroom. It was insanity.’

Mulder sat up from where he lay on the floor of the living room, Melissa laying on the floor in front of him, gurgling away. ‘Hey, I was starting to wonder where everyone had gotten to.’

‘Jackson was showing me some of the wooded area out back.’

Mulder looked between them. ‘Jackson, huh. Good,’ his expression softened as Scully grinned. ‘I was just planning on starting dinner, who wants to help?’

The rhetoric was merely there to give the option to back out of helping – they all helped each night, dinner was something that was worked on by all of them so that nobody can complain if they don’t like it. It was something Scully had suggested when they first moved into the house, when neither of them was able to decide what to eat each night, and neither of them had needed to cook for, well, a while. Jackson had slipped into this routine easily, even if it was just to assuage his fears of being kicked out.

He knew they wouldn’t, not for not cooking, anyway, but that underlying anxiety seemed ever-present. What if he wasn’t the son they wanted? But they had done more than enough to convince him otherwise, made him a bedroom, shown him the dining table chair Scully had kept permanently empty, just in case they found him, given him his own shelf in the main bathroom. Scully had disappeared out early boxing day morning and come back with a rectangular bundle of neatly wrapped sketchbooks, pencils and charcoal. Mulder had driven him to choose paint colours, giving him free rein with the design, not blinking twice when he said was going to paint one of the walls as a skyline, fading from city to forest to mountains, and one of the walls as a chalkboard, only challenging him when he went to pay for the paint himself, and Mulder looked at him like he was insane as he pulled his own wallet out, insisting that he pay for his son’s bedroom: _I didn’t get to last time, I sure am this time._

* * *

Eventually, his daily adventuring around the land became something that they all partook in. Some days it was still just himself on his own, but increasingly more often it would be him and Scully, or him and Mulder, or their whole, mismatched family. They’d find new areas to explore; a clearing that, in the summer, would be good for picnics, trees that were ideal for climbing, paths that glowed in green-tinted sunlight during the mid-afternoon.

He became fond of taking his walks with his sister perched on his hip, or strapped to his chest, pointing out various landmarks. The hollow tree that he passed often, or the glade of bluebells that bordered the stream. He’d tell her stories, telling her about his life before he found their parents, about the schools he went to and the visions he had.

As the seasons warmed, and Lissie grew, he started showing her what he could do, perching her on his knee as he sat on a fallen log, taking a handful of soil and growing a seedling in his palm, the flower blooming for her. Or he’d project images for her to play with, show her a scene covered in ice, or a rainbow reaching down to touch the forest floor.

His favourite days became the days in which he could take her out, giving Scully and Mulder a break for a couple of hours to catch up on work or tidying or…each other; he never really wanted to know what they got up to when they were left alone – some things were best not thought about. But it gave him time and space to be himself, to show someone else that he was special and important. He got the impression that whilst they weren’t scared of his powers, his parents also weren’t entirely comfortable with them. There was a certain hesitancy that came with the unknown, particularly an unknown that had caused them so much pain already. And so, he had avoided using them too much, without ever really discussing it with them. He didn’t want to make them any more uncomfortable than they already were.

But Melissa wasn’t scared: she didn’t know to be. She giggled and gurgled as he showed her brightly coloured butterflies flitting around them, or a stone tower with a princess at the top. He wondered if one day she would be scared, if she would realise that it wasn’t normal to be able to create images and make things move and grow. He wondered if one day she would look differently at him, with horror, maybe, or jealousy, instead of the intrigue and admiration she gazed at him with now. Or maybe, just maybe, she would just look at him as her older brother, who could make amazing things happen with his mind, and who she treasured for that.

Probably not, but he could still hope.

**Author's Note:**

> So, um...yeah. There will be more from this little family unit because honestly I just like writing happy families. And at least when I mess with their lives, I don't make them unhappy, unlike a certain person *cough* Chris *cough* Carter. *cough cough* Sorry, I had something in my throat there.


End file.
